Rural America

By Reviewed by Linda Shrieves, of The Sentinel Staff, February 6, 1994

In the small and sometimes claustrophobic world of Egypt, Maine, Lloyd Barrington is an unlikely hero.At 8 years old, he is a fat kid, fond of writing poetry and trying to cope with the death of his mother. He lives in a house with his father, two grandfathers and an odd bunch of uncles. But it is his Uncle Walty who inspires Lloyd to do something meaningful: He sews Lloyd a costume out of a green silky bridesmaid dress and encourages him to become Super Tree Man. Lloyd relishes the role, stealing out in the middle of the night to plant trees along barren streets, in the yards of lonely old ladies and others unfortunate enough to live without the cooling wonders of shade.

WASHINGTON - It's Christmas and a strange white-bearded fellow uttering quack-quack-quack has streaked across the continent, dumping a large sack of something on America's hearth. Phil Robertson - millionaire star of "Duck Dynasty" - seems an unlikely antagonist as 2013 wraps up. As all sentient beings know by now, he was suspended from the wildly popular A&E program for comments he made about gays during a recent GQ interview. Suddenly our nation is consumed anew with impassioned debate about nearly every foundational principle - freedom of speech, religious freedom, civil rights and same-sex marriage.

Need a respite from the grim news of the day? Try restoring yourself with a visit to the Orlando Museum of Art, which hosts the expansive retrospective exhibition "Grandma Moses in the 21st Century," an overview of one of America's most famous artists. In her time, Anna Mary Robertson Moses was an American phenomenon -- the no-nonsense farm woman who took up painting at age 76 and carried on right past age 101. Grandma Moses believed in work. "Work of any description adds to one's happiness," she said, and in the rural America of her lifetime, there was plenty of work to do. "I had always wanted to paint," Moses told an interviewer, "but I just didn't have time until I was 76."

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam will help farming families in rural America who have been hit the hardest by the economic downfall. Putnam was assigned to the Rural America Solutions Group, his staff said Friday. The 15-member task force, chaired by other members of the House, including Tennessee Republican Phil Roe, will address agriculture and farming problems in rural areas. Putnam has represented most of Polk County and parts of Osceola and Hillsborough counties since 2001.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam will help farming families in rural America who have been hit the hardest by the economic downfall. Putnam was assigned to the Rural America Solutions Group, his staff said Friday. The 15-member task force, chaired by other members of the House, including Tennessee Republican Phil Roe, will address agriculture and farming problems in rural areas. Putnam has represented most of Polk County and parts of Osceola and Hillsborough counties since 2001.

RURAL SUICIDES. Years of financial hardship have touched off record numbers of suicides and raised the incidence of drug use, depression and child abuse in rural America, officials say. Mental health problems are growing faster in rural areas than in cities, but rural mental health services remain woefully inadequate, said witnesses at the first of three nationwide hearings by the National Advisory Mental Health Council and the National Mental Health Leadership...

THE AGRICULTURE Department will establish offices at 17 historically black universities to help encourage minorities to enter agriculture and forestry. Florida A&M University in Tallahassee is among the 17. Deputy Secretary Peter C. Myers said Thursday the offices will be ''a focal point for all USDA activities'' at the universities. ''From international trade to the revitalization of rural America, there are numerous career opportunities in agriculture and forestry,'' he said.

Today's chatsHere are highlights of today's forums. For more listings, check your online service or Chat Soup on the Internet at http://www.chatsoup.comAMERICA ONLINE: For all chats, use keywords AOL Live:Publisher and novelist Joseph Kanon on his book Los Alamos, 1 p.m.Racing announcer Eli Gold on auto racing, 9 p.m.Actor Scott Bairstow on his current film Wild America and upcoming futuristic action drama The Postman, 10 p.m.INTERNET: Curt Smith from Tears...

Demographic trends in the spread of AIDS have taken an ominous turn toward America's smaller towns, a Louisiana State University researcher said at a recent meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Atlanta. Looking at the county-by-county reporting of AIDS over the last decade, Nina Lam has found that ''the fastest growing trend is now the spread from the large city to its surrounding rural areas.'' Lam concluded that as time goes by, this spread to rural America will become significant.

Florida Endowment officials are trying to re-establish the original spirit of turn-of-the-century intellectual retreats this year with Chautauqua revivals in DeFuniak Springs, Mount Dora and Avon Park.The original Mount Dora Chautauqua was patterned after a program established in New York, which continues to this day.The Mount Dora event started in 1887 and continued for nearly 20 years. The Chautauqua movement began with a concern for the quality of public education and an increased interest in religion after the Civil War.Around the early 1900s, the Chautauqua movement was winding down.

From the beginning, Obama's charisma and message of hope drew people to him. He recruited an army of volunteers, raised an unprecedented amount of money, tapped the social-networking power of the Web and ran a tightly disciplined campaign. On the road, he packed stadiums, civic centers and parks with adoring supporters who wanted nothing more than to touch his hand. "Our march is a march for America. Not black America or white America. Not rich America or poor America, rural America or urban America.

"How do you want to be remembered?" Sean Astin asks. That's a big theme in the new baseball movie, The Final Season, which he produced and stars in. In the tiny town of Norway, Iowa, the boys find their piece of immortality by winning state baseball titles, after putting in long practices after long days on the farm, just to be remembered. It's a theme in Astin's life, too. The 36-year-old former child actor, the son of Patty Duke and adoptive son of John "Gomez Addams" Astin, the once-and-future Rudy and Sam Gamgee of the Lord of the Rings movies, has a reputation.

NEVADA, Iowa -- The ethanol boom of recent years -- which spurred a frenzy of distillery construction, record corn prices, rising food prices and hopes of a new future for rural America -- may be fading. Only last year, farmers here spoke of a biofuel gold rush, and they rejoiced as prices for ethanol and the corn used to produce it set records. But companies and farm cooperatives have built so many distilleries so quickly that the ethanol market is suddenly plagued by a glut, in part because the means to distribute it has not kept pace.

COAHOMA, Miss. -- The abandoned shells of buildings along the main drag here serve as a glum backdrop for youngsters who sit in front of them for hours, chatting and staring into the occasional passing car. A liquor store and convenience store are the only places to shop. The little work available is seasonal or at casinos 25 miles away. Poverty has settled into this Mississippi Delta town for an extended stay. Fifty-five percent of households in this community of 350 take in less than $15,000 a year, well below the federal poverty line of $18,850 for a family of four.

Need a respite from the grim news of the day? Try restoring yourself with a visit to the Orlando Museum of Art, which hosts the expansive retrospective exhibition "Grandma Moses in the 21st Century," an overview of one of America's most famous artists. In her time, Anna Mary Robertson Moses was an American phenomenon -- the no-nonsense farm woman who took up painting at age 76 and carried on right past age 101. Grandma Moses believed in work. "Work of any description adds to one's happiness," she said, and in the rural America of her lifetime, there was plenty of work to do. "I had always wanted to paint," Moses told an interviewer, "but I just didn't have time until I was 76."

Need a respite from the grim news of the day? Try restoring yourself with a visit to the Orlando Museum of Art, which hosts the expansive retrospective exhibition "Grandma Moses in the 21st Century," an overview of one of America's most famous artists. Though she lived in rural byways and disdained the success that came to her, Moses and her images came to define a particular vision of American life. Through the lens of her buoyant humanity, mid-20th century America saw the joyous community and simple agrarian labors that were disappearing from the American experience.

Here's a think-tank report that likely will ruffle a lot of feathers: It says the ''farm vote'' is a myth; the nation's poorest rural counties in fact get few farm payments; and if politicians are interested in helping rural America, they ought to think about programs that have nothing to do with farming.The report was issued by the Center for National Policy, a research organization with ties to congressional Democrats, as part of a broader project designed to force people to reassess their assumptions about how the U.S. economy works.

Rural America is in the middle of a crisis that runs deeper than farm foreclosures and bad crop prices and needs a revitalization plan from both political parties, not presidential budget cuts, the new chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee said Monday.Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who came to Georgia for a hearing with 300 Southern farmers, said a third of the country's population lives outside cities, in areas with an economic decline and a future that bodes further despair.''Rural America is in trouble,'' Leahy said.

LEESBURG -- The scenes are crafted simply, almost as if by a child's hand. Picking apples, collecting maple sap and other vignettes taken from the rural America of a bygone era are lauded for their purity of color, their vigor and attention to detail. They are from the brush of Anna Mary Robertson, known to the world as Grandma Moses. The self-taught artist (1860-1961) became perhaps the United States' most noted folk artist. Her work was sometimes labeled "American primitive" by art critics because of its simplicity.

From the earliest days of the republic, the American countryside has been seen as a bastion of egalitarianism.But today, large swaths of rural America, from the rocky coast of Maine to the Rocky Mountains, are marked by class warfare caused by the increasing migration of well-heeled full- and part-time residents from metropolitan society.This new migration is a reversal of historic U.S. migrant flows. For much of this century, Americans left rural America for the great cities. But during the 1990s, this trend began to shift.